Apparently You Think You're Going To Die Tomorrow
by Caricature of a Witch
Summary: Missy receives a visitor who gives her something she never wanted to see: the Doctor's confession dial. She hasn't permitted him to die yet.


**Author's note:** _This was inspired by a Tumblr post forever ago, and I actually wanted to go somewhere completely else with it and it was supposed to be longer, but I can't find my notes anymore and if I don't post it now, I never will, so here you go._

* * *

 **Apparently You Think You're Going To Die Tomorrow**

When Ohila found her, Missy didn't think she was doing anything that warranted anyone's alarm. She had installed herself on Nothakk, a relatively small moon orbiting a gas giant that in turn was orbiting a blue sun. A great part of the population had been at war until one and a half of their years ago, and in the still very obvious chaos left behind it was easy for her to make a quick career through various reasonably powerful political positions. The planet itself wasn't of much interest to her and she couldn't care less, but she knew the rebels turned politicians had access to downright absurdly large reserves of a specific metal she needed for another project. It was almost impossible to find the material anywhere else, and gaining access by also gaining the former rebels' trust was decidedly the preferable method over attempting to find it and take it by force. And who knew, she might need their cooperation in the future, which meant she'd rather avoid making enemies at this point.

All in all, she wasn't making an effort to hide, but she also wasn't expecting anyone to find her. The Doctor wouldn't even have a reason to stop her anyway, seeing as she was actively helping with the necessary rebuilds. That she was doing it for self-serving reasons was hardly relevant.

"My Lady, you have a visitor." Missy looked up from her tablet. A grey-skinned native stood in the arched doorway, his tail respectfully curled around his right ankle. "A Lady Ohila, from the Sisterhood of Karn."

Missy paused. "Send her in, please, Udzil." Her mind rapidly flickered through possible reasons for the Sisterhood to seek her out, and came up blank. They weren't overly fond of Gallifrey, so it was unlikely that the Time Lords had anything to do with it. It could be a trap, of course, but then she'd have to give Gallifrey credit for creativity. The Doctor wouldn't send anyone else, he'd barge in himself and demand she stop immediately, before he even knew what she was doing. It was possible they didn't even know who she was and this visit was entirely unrelated to anything.

A figure entered the room with slow, measured steps. Missy eyed the red robes and failed to be impressed by the slight dramatic flair. "Greetings, and all that. Hello. What can I do for you?"

The figure slid off her hood, revealing a strangely motherly face with sharp eyes, and nodded at her. "Master."

That wasn't the name she went by anymore most of the time, and certainly not the name she went by on Nothakk. Her eyes flickered to the door before fixing on her visitor. "Not quite, at the moment."

The woman's lips twitched, if only for a moment. "I am Ohila, of the Sister-"

"The Sisterhood of Karn, yes, I know." Missy waved her hand impatiently, and then smiled. "It seems introductions are unnecessary. Tea? The tea here tastes a bit like mud, I found, but it's drinkable."

Ohila shook her head. "This isn't a social visit."

Missy refrained from rolling her eyes when she didn't go on after that. "Oh dear. I was hoping for a pyjama party. What is it, then? Have I offended the Sisterhood? Do you want me to join? I'm not going to join. I'm very flattered, obviously, but no."

"The Doctor sent me." With that, she placed a small object on the table between them. Missy looked at her, shrugged, looked down at the object, and felt her blood slow down and freeze in her veins.

She hardly noticed as Ohila left.

Missy stared at the small disc in her hand, at the letters, the lines and circles that told her exactly what this was, as if she could have any doubts about it. And she _had_ doubts about it, for Rassilon's sake, she had to have doubts about it, forced herself to doubt it, to look at it from every possible angle no matter how convoluted.

Maybe it was a trick.

Maybe it wasn't actually him who had sent it, but someone else, hoping to lure her out.

 _(Except that no one else knew, could know, of this custom.)_

Maybe it _was_ sent by him but was still a trick, because who would have more reason to lure her out than he did.

 _(Except that wasn't what he did, that was never what he did, he didn't actively seek her out, it wasn't how they played.)_

Maybe he thought it was funny. He might have acquired a sense of humour even more questionable than usual, or a taste for more obvious cruelty. Maybe he was waiting for her somewhere, laughing at the idea of her arriving in a frenzy, counting on her to actually be worried about him. She wouldn't give him that satisfaction, wouldn't, couldn't do that, could she?

 _(Except that that was even less like him, it wasn't something he'd laugh at, she wasn't even sure it'd be something she herself would laugh at for long, and that left only one possible conclusion, and it wasn't one she was willing to accept, it_ wasn't _, it couldn't be –)_

"My Lady –"

With a snarl, she grabbed her multifunction device and blindly fired it in the direction the voice was coming from, hearing the sizzling impact a moment later. She must have hit the wall, because the sound was instantly followed by panicked shuffling. She didn't care. Her eyes were still fixed on the unassuming golden disc. Maybe she'd read it wrong. Maybe it wasn't his. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

She left Nothakk ten minutes later, projects and rebels and metal forgotten.

Just as she expected, calling his phone or any other communication device was of no use, but she still tried. She just wished he had a voicemail, then she could yell at something with his voice at least, instead of snarling at the empty air. She wondered if his psychic paper would pick up her thoughts so he would get the full force of her anger in writing at least, but it wasn't a very reliable method of communicating through space and time.

Missy closed her eyes, breathed out slowly, deliberately. She needed to focus.

What did she know? Next to nothing. He was going to die, and she gritted her teeth and pressed on – the Doctor was going to die, the Doctor, who jumped into every impossible situation with the laughably optimistic belief that he was going to _survive_ somehow, was now so certain of his death that he had a confession dial delivered to her. He was going to die. (She considered briefly that he might have sent it to her in the hopes she'd find him and save him, but that didn't seem right.)

The messenger had been of the Sisterhood of Karn, but if Ohila hadn't told her where to find him when she had the chance, it was doubtful that they'd be willing to help. Maybe they didn't know anything themselves. She couldn't waste time.

The confession dial would only open once the Doctor was dead. They were operating on separate timelines right now, so it was hard to say how much time she had – when the moment of his death would merge with her present, their timelines aligned. When the dial opened she'd know it was too late, that she hadn't gotten to him in time and couldn't save him anymore without ripping the universe apart.

She wasn't sure she wouldn't do it anyway, universe be damned. She hadn't allowed him to die. She wouldn't have it.

She made a list of times and places and ticked them off one by one. The moons of the Medusa Cascade. The beginning of Earth, when humanity was just starting to develop. The coordinates that used to mark Gallifrey's location even if it wasn't quite there, and on the way there she cobbled together a temporal scanner to see if he had been there in the past or would be in the future, relative to the moment she arrived, but nothing. She visited the Library where River's data ghost resided, without much hope but she had to be thorough. She generated an algorithm to suggest the most likely places and times all over the universe, places where he had been happy that he might want to revisit because he was sentimental, places where he'd been sad that he might want to revisit because he was a masochist. Places that meant trouble, because what better way to go for the Doctor than to die fighting an impossible fight in the name of freedom or peace or whatever else came to his mind. Places that might in some way be difficult to avoid if they called for him, because if he knew he would die if he went there – why would he go if he could choose not to? What could make him accept his own death as inevitable and imminent?

She tried to trace his TARDIS but he either had strengthened its defences or powered it down to standby mode. She scoured the universe up and down, forward and backward and right through the middle and found nothing, and then she took half an hour on an empty desert moon where she staggered to the ground and screamed because her mind was tying itself in tight, painful knots and she couldn't do anything else for a while.

When her throat was raw and her fingers bloody from beating at sand and stone, when she was calm, she ignored the universe and turned her focus to Earth. He hadn't come to UNIT for help, not even paying a visit to the Brigadier. Torchwood knew nothing, and she retreated quickly when their systems alerted the team to an intruder in their database. Any other time, she'd have enjoyed watching them run around like headless chickens trying to find who the hell had gotten in and how. Now, she didn't even stay until they started reacting.

Companions, every single human one she knew about. Perhaps the Doctor found it comforting to visit them one last time, at times where they were still alive and on the planet. He could even talk to them, most wouldn't recognise him, not this him, not at a point in time before they had ever come with him. Barbara and Ian. Polly. Jamie and Victoria, and he was nowhere to be found, wasn't checking on Jo, Sarah Jane was clueless, just like Harry and Tegan and Peri and Ace, and Missy didn't know why she even remembered all their names.

She weaved in and out of Rose Tyler's timeline until it vanished, stood on an empty beach in Norway in 2006, shoulders hunched against the biting wind as she stared at sand and waves, not even trying to sort out the tangle of emotions burning her heart. She watched Martha entering her home, with a short wary glance at the woman in the strangely Victorian dress at the street corner, like she felt something off about her but couldn't tell what. Donna, and then Amy and Rory who had travelled with a Doctor she hadn't met, and he wasn't _there._ She didn't bother with Clara; he wouldn't go to someone he'd have to explain himself to.

She didn't let herself think about how much time had passed, how much time she had already wasted, without coming even a single step closer. There was no information, nothing to build on, he could be anywhere in space and time, and it wasn't enough for her to make a plan of while her brain spun in circles and threatened to slip into panic. She couldn't find him.

Maybe he would find her.

Exhausted, with shaking fingers, she set the coordinates to the next best insignificant planet she could think of. Cuypah in their year 319-6 had developed space travel advanced enough to traverse between galaxies. Missy didn't waste time trying to conquer the planet. The first blast obliterated half of the second-largest continent before they even knew they were under attack. She had calculated just the right amount of time, gave them the opportunity to form a makeshift defence, let them send out a few messages and ships to ensure the word would get out before she launched the second attack.

He would hate her for this, for the seemingly mindless destruction of an innocent planet that held no interest to her, but if she could draw him out like this, it would be worth his hatred.

When he didn't come, and she was watching from above as the planet burst into beautiful shapes of flame and smoke and ash, she thought she might just hate herself.

Her fury was beyond screaming now, made her steps sluggish and her eyes sting no matter how much she blinked, and instead of raging at an uncaring universe once more, she buried herself in a corner of a mostly empty room.

When she emerged, after two hours, forty-seven minutes, and twenty-four seconds, her mind was made up. She had vowed that she wouldn't allow the Doctor to die, and therefore he wouldn't die, no matter what it took.

She neatly fixed the hair that was hanging in wild strands all around her face, replaced the faintly gritty, scorched dress with a different one, washed the blood from her fingers and hid the shadows under her slightly reddened eyes with a layer of meticulously applied make-up before she returned to Earth, already programming her device with flight plans.

She ran. The Doctor extricated his pet from the Dalek casing, and Missy ran, because he was serious. Even if she had saved him, even if she had saved Clara, even though she had let herself be dragged along to _Skaro_ for no reason other than to save the Doctor, even though he had ignored her and denied her and shown not an iota of care. Even though he must have known she would have stopped him, would never have let him kill Clara Oswald, and he _still_ left her behind.

Surrounded by Daleks, knowing the Doctor was long gone, Missy wondered if it was worth it.


End file.
